Door holder



June 21,1938. c.P. w|cKs DOOR HOLDER File i March 20, 1936 11v VENTOR I A TTORNEY Patented June 21, 1938 UNITED STATES noon HOLDER Clifford P. Wicks, Stamford, Conn, assignor to The Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company, Stamford, Conn., a corporation of Connectiout Application March 20, 1936, Serial No. 69,748

2 Claims.

This invention relates to a device for holding a door in an open position. The art of door holders is a very old one, and even the patented art has been very highly developed, so that there are a great number of patents showing door holders of all types.

My invention comprises an improvement, which, though quite narrow in character, is nevertheless of considerable commercial value and does present quite a forward step.

The commercial development of door holders has been such that the trade has generally accepted the association of a door bufier and a door holding hook as a working combination. To use a hook alone, would permit the door to be injured when opened against the hook or its mounting. The door buffer protects the door from the hook, the hook being available, however, to engage the door and hold it open when desired. A door holding hook and buffer, in the prior art, usually comprises a metal buffer holder in which a resilient buffer is mounted and held, and a door holding hook mounted on an eye formed on the buffer holder.

Since doors are made to open to the right and to the left, it has been customary in this art to mount the eye on which the holding hook is carried, on one side or the other of the buffer, depending on whether or not the buffer is to be used with a right hand or a left hand door. For many years door buffers and holders have been sold in this way; that is, the combination of a buffer and hook, with the hook mounted either on the right or left hand side, and the trade has always ordered left hand or right hand buffers, depending on the direction of opening of the door with which a buffer is to be used.

I have made a radical improvement over the prior art by mounting my hook holding eye on the upper surface of the metal buffer holding portion, so that the hook is now capable of cooperation with either a right or a left hand door. It has been found that when the hook is so mounted, it many times drops into position on the buffer when released from the door and does not drop into a downward position out of the way of the buffer.

I have found that by particularly shaping the upper surface of the buffer, as in the form of an inverted V, the hook when dropped on the buffer will be cammed by this inverted V into a downward side position out of obstructing relation to the buffer. This general combination, including the mounting of the hook and the guiding thereof, I believe, is a very radical improvement in the art, and I shall claim it and the sub-combinations thereof broadly in the claims which are appended hereto.

While I propose to form the inverted V on the metal portion of the buffer, or the buffer holder, it could, of course, be formed on the buffer portion per se, as will be readily appreciated by those skilled in the art.

It will probably be helpful now to refer to the accompanying drawing for a description of a particular modification of my invention. In the drawing, Fig. 1 is a view showing a buffer-holder combination, with the holding hook holding the door in open position. Fig. 2 is an end view and section of the buffer and the holding hook, showing the hook as it falls down on the buffer when released from holding position on the door. Fig. 3 illustrates just how the hook is cammed into one of two side positions.

Referring now more particularly to the drawing, reference numeral I0 designates the metal portion or buffer holding portion of a buffer held by screws ll against the floor. It is possible, of

course, to use a wall type of buffer in my device. In so far as my invention is concerned, it is immaterial whether the buffer is mounted on. the floor or on the wall.

The screw I2 is cast integrally with the portion In with its tapered screw portion 12 within an open socket 14, into which a removable resilient buffer body I5 is inserted and preferably rotated so as to be held firmly by the screw portion l3 of the screw l2.

An eye 16 is formed on the upper surface of the buffer holder l0 and has mounted thereon a hook I! which may engage an eye l8 carried by a door l9. It is obvious that in this sort of arrangement, the hook I! is adapted for cooperation with either a right hand or left hand door, so that it is no longer necessary for buyers of such devices to specify right or left hand devices.

In order to prevent the hook from remaining on the upper surface of the buffer body I9 when it is released from the eye l8, the upper surface of the body I0 is formed with an inverted V-portion 20 cooperable with a rounded surface on the hook I! for camming the hook I! into its full line or dotted line position, illustrated in Fig. 3. The invention will now probably be quite clear to those skilled in the art.

I now claim:

1. In a combined door buffer and door holder, in which the door holder is a hook carried by means fixed to the door buffer, and the buffer has a rubber buffer portion, means supporting said hook above said rubber buffer portion so. that said hook will have a tendency to drop theresaid hook above said rubber buffer portion, and a specially shaped upper surface on the bufier for directing gravitational movement of said hook into a downward hanging position in nonobstructing relation to the rubber bufier portion 5 when said hook is released from holding relation to the door.

CLIFFORD P. WICKS. 

